TEAM ARKEA - SAMSIC

The dream of a territory (which was annexed to France in 1532 but has retained its distinct flavour) ever since Hinault retired came true in 2014 with the Tour de France debut of an unashamedly Breton team whose main sponsor was the regional council, headed by the politician and great cycling aficionado Jean-Yves Le Drian. It was the first regional team from West France (more specifically, South—South-West) to take part in the Tour de France since 1961.

Its passion for cycling and four Tour winners (Lucien Petit-Breton, Jean Robic, Louison Bobet and Bernard Hinault) make Brittany a hotbed and, in some way, the cradle of French cycling. However, 25 years have gone by since the last time a Breton rider wore the yellow jersey (Stéphane Heulot in 1996). Before signing for the team from his home region, Warren Barguil ended a 23-year drought in Foix in 2017, when he became the first Breton to win a stage since Pascal Lino in 1994. Of course, the Grand Départ in Brittany carries special significance for this outfit because Hinault is also the most recent Breton winner of a Tour de France stage in Brittany.
The team was born in 1994 as an amateur outfit on the initiative of industrialist and cycling lover Jean Floc'h. It became a professional squad in 2005 and entered the second division of the sport in 2011. Bretagne-Séché Environnement became Fortuneo, which joined forces with a variety of co-sponsors, and then Arkéa–Samsic. The team turned heads in its first Tour de France starts thanks to joining numerous breakaways, Brice Feillu's 16th place overall in 2014 (an exploit he matched in 2017) and the striking disqualification in 2015 of its Argentinian leader Eduardo Sepúlveda, who lost his nerve after a mechanical problem and hitched a ride in a car, not to mention British sprinter Dan McLay bursting onto the stage with a third place in Montauban in 2016. While new recruit André Greipel was a big flop, Warren Barguil won the French championship and finished tenth in the 2019 Tour in his return to the roots. However, the signing of the Colombian Nairo Quintana, who remains a contender for the yellow jersey at age 31 even as his fellow countrymen Egan Bernal and Miguel Ángel López hog the limelight, took the Breton team to a whole new level last year.

A FIGURE

7: The number of Tour de France starts by the Bretagne-Séché Environnement team, later renamed Fortuneo-Vital Concept, Fortuneo-Oscaro, Fortuneo–Samsic and then Arkéa–Samsic.